String of Pearls

After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

The cut of her satin dress accentuates an angular frame.The color of her hair, her lips, and garment disparate beneath the harsh lighting where she sits on a stoolby her boyfriend in an all-night diner.

She closes the cover of his matchbook to lay it downupon discovering a woman’s name and number scrawled on it, happy for a distraction when the server engages him in conversation.

Between two coffee cups, their hands rest on a counter almost touching.She wonders if he is seeing the girl and considers confronting him but doesn’t want to know.

She raises a hand to her bodice where the necklace should be, the one he keeps promising her. She imagines a knotted rope of shiny pearls, the feel of them against her fingers, her looking so complete.

Barbara Astor is a poet who lives in Bellbrook, Ohio. Her work, in part, has appeared in Concho River Review, Avocet, The Lyric, Lilliput Review, Kaleidoscope, Tiger's Eye, and The Avalon Literary Review. She is the author of two poetry collections by Finishing Line Press: Thirty Years Past (2011) and High into the Blue (2013).